But many of those people DO pay Google for G Suite. So it's not like they are whining about not getting service for a free product.
Personally I only use my Gmail for Google services (analytics, console etc). The Gmail interface feels like I'm back at nursery school. It's just horrible, good that they still allow IMAP access.
I've just today moved one of my primary email accounts to my server provider who has just rolled out their own cloud email service using Axigen https://www.axigen.com
The pricing is very competitive, it includes mobile sync, calendar, todo lists etc, and the web interface is very grown up (Apple mail/ thunderbird like).